Apple to launch iPhone 4 Plus and iPhone 5

Apple may be wowing us with not one, but two new iPhones before the year is out, according to investors JP Morgan.

Analyst Mark Moskowitz said that, according JP Morgan’s research, we can expect a lighter and thinner iPhone 5 (we hope that research didn’t cost them too much), but that Apple will also be releasing an improved version of its iPhone 4, which Moskowitz refers to as an iPhone 4 Plus. Tinkering with an iPhone that’s already in the wild wouldn’t be a first for Apple – this iPhone 4 Plus sounds like it would be to the iPhone 4 what the 3GS was to the 3G – but its release would mark the first time Apple will have had two competing iPhones at the same time.

We’ve been hearing increasingly juicy rumours on Apple’s iPhone 5 in recent weeks, with a white iPhone 4S (or should that be iPhone 4 Plus?) apparently cropping up on an AT&T computer system just last week. Vodafone made a similar slip-up, this time on their website, where a product page for a signal-boosting accessory listed both black and white versions of the iPhone 5 as compatible handsets. Not to be left out, Orange leaked its own tidbit of iNews, with its CEO Stephane Richard letting slip that the French iPhone 5 release date would be the 15th October. One way or another, at least that’s a rumour with an expiry date.